[quantumhobbit]

Evertime I hear someone defend something as a best practice without any other justification, I mentally switch “best practice” with “cargo culting” and lose no information.

Sometimes the best practice in question does have value and can be articulated. But in those cases the articulated reason makes a better argument and you don’t hear the phrase “best practice” quite as often. When it is just cargo culting, the only defense is to repeat “best practice” over and over again.

[vorpalhex]

I prefer to think of the term as "sensible default". A "best practice" is usually not the worst default to have, and if you don't have the time or bandwidth to dive into a problem and just want to pick a solution from a hat, you could do a lot worse.

The danger comes in that when you want to supplant the best practice with a new practice, you have to genuinely understand the problem in your context, and be able to articulate a full explanation about why the new practice has an advantage.

But there is definitely cargo culting around best practices - see using Redux. Core features of your app shouldn't be left to just acceptable defaults, but instead you should grapple with those problems and choose the best possible answer you can at the time.

[SketchySeaBeast]

>The danger comes in that when you want to supplant the best practice with a new practice, you have to genuinely understand the problem in your context, and be able to articulate a full explanation about why the new practice has an advantage.

We're experiencing that exact problem - we're introducing for the first time a company wide best practice, which isn't even defined yet and in a constant state of flux, but it's become a shield the strongest evangelists stand behind "why would you want to do that? It's not best practice?" - the "best practice" might not last the month, and it's not clear why that's the "best practice", but it's become a magic seal of approval.